Staff stole tables, toasters and iPads from state insurer: inquiry

Staff engaged at scandal-ridden state insurer icare allegedly stole property including tables, televisions, toasters, crockery and iPads, according to a former employee who says he was told not to investigate the matter because it was a waste of time.

The revelations were made on Monday to a NSW parliamentary inquiry into the embattled government agency which has underpaid thousands of injured workers by up to $80 million.

Chris McCann is a whistleblower at icare who left in 2018 after being bullied out and became suicidal.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Former icare general manager of compliance, fraud and corruption control Chris McCann told the upper house inquiry that he estimated there had been about 50 thefts over a six-month period in 2016 after the insurer's office was refurbished.

"It's hard to believe but overnight property such as tables, chairs, cushions, microwave ovens, television sets, iPads, toasters, kettles, crockery, knives and forks were going missing," he said.

"Numerous reports were made to me about the theft of property from icare over a period of time."

Mr McCann, who in August blew the whistle on the toxic culture within the organisation in a joint investigation by the Herald and ABC TV's 7.30, told the inquiry that people at the organisation "did not want to know about any bad news to deal with corruption".

The former homicide detective said there was no asset register within the office at the time, and when he suggested the matter be referred to police, he was told to ignore it. He added that several taxi cab charges had also been misused.

"I was told to drop it, I was told not to investigate it, not to waste my time on it, it was a waste of time and the amounts were inconsequential," Mr McCann said.

"I said 'It's not about the value, it's about what it's doing to the culture of this company internally, people having money stolen out of their drawers overnight'."

Mr McCann was the first whistleblower at icare to discover problems and report it to senior management. Instead of being listened to, he previously said he was undermined, blocked, bullied and eventually forced out.

He said other submissions made to the inquiry had been "misleading and in a number of instances untruthful".

Mr McCann gave one example of the cultural problems he saw, recounting a mid-2017 board meeting where a television was playing vision of a senior Catholic church member arriving at court.

"One director quipped 'I bet you this is the biggest audience since he had the boys lined up outside the change rooms'," he said.

"Most attendees at that meeting were aware I was a survivor of cruelty inflicted by a Catholic priest ... yet nobody would stop it."

Mr McCann said while he joined icare in good physical and mental health, it unravelled over a period of two years when he was "bullied, victimised, ignored, chastised, threatened and ridiculed".

"They destroyed my confidence, and my career," he said.

Greens MP and inquiry member David Shoebridge described icare as "basically a department store without a checkout".

"The fact there was no effort to crack down on these thefts once the whistle was blown speaks volumes about the fundamental problems in the organisation," he said.

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